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[doubting-tomas]

If seven months has felt like a wondrous eternity, Then may we have many more eternities before us

sirisulie {for my best friend} (via siriuslie)

[doubting-tomas]

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

[doubting-tomas]

[doubting-tomas]

Thom had to admit, it kind of... felt painful, listening to Simon talk like this. This wasn’t the Simon he knew, to speak so candidly, to doubt everything that made him who he was. Or so he thought. That was where the pain came from, he realised - everything had changed. There was no going back. Simon wasn’t going to go back to the same person he was before all this, ultimately angry and innocent. They now had to face the consequences of going forward like this, somehow struggle through. And so even as he kept watching the far distance, the deafening silence of the stars filling the space outside of the world of him and Simon and the slowly crumbling avalance of the apostle’s words, he wanted to pull back and look at him, but felt like just looking at him in the eye would make Simon stop talking, make him stop questioning himself. And what Simon clearly needed was to break himself apart, like the roughened shell of a monkey nut over time, and find inside what he had been building around for a very long time. After years of destroying and  breaking down everything around them, this... was the final destruction. 

And Thom realised as well, how young Simon was. He could hear in Simon’s voice a self discovery that for Thom, probably wasn’t quite so raw, because Thom was used to disappointment now, and had built up and broken down and built up again many times before. And of course, Simon had suffered, it wasn’t that Thom had suffered more strongly so far, it was just harder for him. Everything was harder, when you were younger. After a while, you got used to the destruction. Everyone is always destroying. Mountains were always splitting, skies were always falling. There is no end to the death.

Maybe not even young. Just, different. Men would always deal with things differently. And that was one thing he did always struggle to admit to himself. He always thought it would be easier if they were just like him, and just let things go. But there was no easy answer, no mindset that could change in a person for the better just like that. It was all a journey. Even if not the journey that was expected or the path that they thought it would be, they always ended up just where they were meant to be.

And now, Simon was looking at him for reassurance. From the bottom of this cliff face. He wanted to know what he thought. The problem was that - something he had tried to look away from for too long, but now was uncomfortably coming to the surface - Simon for all his lambasting of him had actually really respected him. Might still respect him. It was something he had known himself - beyond just what people had told him - but which unnerved him because it meant he had been put on a pedestal, and sooner or later he would fall. If he wasn’t or hadn’t already. It was like Simon was asking him desperately to reestablish that place on the pedestal, to be a glowing light of responsibility and illumination and ‘everything’s going to be alright’, and that was a bit too much to bear. From Simon, from anyone. He found it hard enough from his kids, and he had failed at that.

Simon thought that if he could go back and change what they had done and  had focused on the message and the way, instead of their rash decisions and single-minded focus at the time, that things would be different. That they would somehow be better people and that they would pure and good in the eyes of the Lord and maybe even that none of this would have happened. Was he just ashamed of how he potentially may have looked in front of his friends and enemies? Thom would probably never know.

He breathed out at Simon’s last question, and it wasn’t really expected, but it was at the same time. He didn’t really think that whatever he said to Simon would be the right answer or the one Simon was looking for. Maybe that didn’t really matter. “You probably need to worry less about what I think and about what anyone else thinks,” he said, almost glumly, because it sounded so trite. But all the best ideas were ultimately unoriginal. Not that he had the best ideas. Just the ideas he could impart. “I think after a while, you get to a stage where it doesn’t matter what they think. All that matters is what you think about yourself.” He drew a pattern in the sand, and wondered what it used to be. Rocks. Lava. Continents. Stars. “But telling you that isn’t going to make you think it. All I know is that... you’re good, Simon. You don’t have anything to set right with the others. There’s no word that will resolve any of that. No matter what happened to us here or now... you’ll be remembered as good. Humbled. Principled. Devote.” He wondered idly if Simon should care this much about setting it right with the others, and more about the ultimate message, their real goal. “You’re loved.” It felt weird to say that, but he didn’t want Simon to have to care what he thought or anyone thought. It was about the way forward now. If he regretted the past, that was fine to nostalgically look back and think things could have been different - that things couldn’t have been the Lord’s way - but there was work to be done now. There were bricks to put back. There was a world to rebuild. And if Simon wasn’t going to be there by his side, if this would all ultimately divide them rather than bring them together as he feared, then he needed to know now, so he could try and learn how to do this all without him, one of the last great pinnacles left in his sky, one of the last rocks left in his sea. If Simon was going to stay there with him though, then they could conquer mountains. It wasn’t going to be the same, he knew that. It was never going to be the same. But it could be better.

the aftermath

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[doubting-tomas]

Who’s the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who’s horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?

Rebecca Stead, Goodbye Stranger (via thequotejournals)

[doubting-tomas]

the aftermath

risetoagreaterpower                                        

Simon climbed through the shrubs, pupils black and wide with the dark, feeling his way through the bushes. Without the sunrise, he’d missed the path, and was making a trip through the plantlife, instead. He was just lucky that it wasn’t thorny underfoot, given his bare feet. The burning summer had cracked the dry earth apart, and almost all but the most hardy of vegetation had been roasted away by the heat.

He hadn’t escaped the tearing, himself. Red had crusted in streaks across the insides of his legs where he’d caught himself running, and on his feet, it was less obvious, merely dried on with the dirt. What did he even care, now that the skin was whole, and new again? He’d barely noticed, or even felt it, when it was raw, let alone now it had been healed. He’d simply needed to get here, however was quickest after he’d gotten an intermittently broken text message that had seemed too crazy to be true.

The stars seemed to hum with light above, and he sucked air into grateful lungs as he climbed. In the cooling minutes that he’d been away from his place at Jesus’ feet, he’d been increasingly aware of the clothes weighing him down, damp as they were from the sweat had seeped in faster than it could evaporate. It occurred to him that he probably stank, that his hair was crawling with grease, and dust, and none of it mattered because Jesus was alive again.  

It was that thought, more than cresting the hill that made him stop and seize a breath. The wind of the summer night whistled across the hilltop, and the dim light almost made him miss the familiar outline in place, as it should have been, at their prayer spot, under the olive tree. “-Thom!”

                       doubting-tomas                                        

How many months had passed since they had first prayed together in this spot? It was all familiar. The crackle of the dry grass under his feet, spiking up through the soles of his boots; the tree whispering above him, sighing in the lightest of breezes. It was all entirely unfamiliar. There was no sound of his voice, no sleepy trudge of feet to match his. The sky above was not its sublime gradient of pink, green, blue, but a piercing navy, the stars closer than they had ever been before.

As Thom knelt down in the soft tussled grass sprouting from the roots of the olive tree, he listened to the soft bird call of some annoying owl that Simon had tried to mimic a month or a year ago. He could feel the dew-stained grass on his knees from where had shredded in a fight from yesterday (was it really only yesterday?).

“Jesus,” he breathed at the ground, his chest rising with a wave of unrestrained joy. He knelt his head down to the ground, touching it and whispering the Shema, every word singing a new meaning.

And then he heard Jesus’ voice. He turned abruptly, tensed, shocked.

Just as abruptly, he realised it wasn’t Jesus. Something jumped in his chest, unfamiliar from the warm glow the Messiah brought to him, but more keen, insistent. “Simon?”

                       yellingtheirdevotion                                        

It didn’t seem like it could be real, that it could be actually happening, but then this day had been nothing if not filled with incredible surprises. As he kept climbing towards him, he stumbled on an upturned stone in the low light and reached out for Thom’s shoulder, instantly elated that the feeling that solid warmth that confirmed he wasn’t conjured out of exhaustion.

“…What are you…what are you doing back here? You’ve seen Jesus, right? I mean -” He laughed, because of course the other one had. He’s seen the state of Thom back…before, and everything about how he looked, how he sat was different now.

It was the air of relief, and Si felt just that too, this thorough joy at the fact that Jesus was a fact, that he could speak that name again without it being the final full-stop on the world, on humanity, on the future of Israel…it was so infinitely good, that he had to laugh with relief. “Oh god, Thom, he’s back, he’s really back, it’s amazing.”

He sighed happily, and it all came rushing out of him, joy, relief, and almost his very bones as he half fell to his knees beside the other apostle, one hand still screwed up tight in the fabric of the t-shirt on Thom’s shoulder.

He laughed again, a little more sadly this time, opening his eyes to peer properly at the other one in the dim light. “We’re not dreaming, right? Because, if we are, I don’t want to ever wake up. God.”

                       doubting-tomas                                        

It was a good question, because with the euphoric topple of Simon’s voice, Thom felt himself looping through that same question - is this just a dream? It was like the catharsis of a Hollywood film, the pinnacle of emotion and feeling and triumph - except this was real, grit embedded in his hands and the ache in and around his eye sockets from barely sleeping for days, crinkled around his senses. And Simon too was weather-worn, his clothes like rags around him, the edges of his eyes knotted to make him look several years older, his face blotchy like a teenager’s but completely clear, and yet an utter grin of elation lit it all up, making him look regardless of all this in a child’s state of bliss.

“I came here to…” He stopped, and just motioned all around with his extended hand to try and summon the words, because he didn’t really know what had brought him here, except something outside of himself that told him this was the place he needed to be, and something that moved him here out of his own accord. It wasn’t the stroll of his mild traveling wander that brought him here, or even just a fleeting desire to be here, but a need as strong as food and water and sleep. This was where they felt most connected to Him, and this was where, right now, they needed to be.

“We’re not dreaming.” He sank down too, conscious of Simon’s fist balled around his t-shirt and that the last time his fist had been this close, his face had paid for it. And even this seemed like a dream, the starlit flecks of Simon’s hair, the shine in his eyes more than pride or love of anything earthly. And if Thom had felt exhausted before, now he felt like a battering ram had knocked him over, tiredness drenching over him. With Simon there too, he knew it was all over. The only questions and fears humming inside his mind were those born of his increasingly nervous, necessarily analytical mind as it had been trained over the past two months with everything happening, that he had pushed down in order to fight against it all more effectively.

“Where have you come from?” Simon looked like he had been on the road far longer than when he had last seen him. Long gone was the boy he had exchanged fists and kicks with. For the first time he could feel of, he felt like a man alongside Simon, no age or experience or disagreement to separate them, but only an equal in adversary and joy.

                       yellingtheirdevotion                                        

He pushed his hand through his hair, the coarseness and grime not even making him blink. What even was the point of what he looked like, really, when they’d made it back to here of all places after the world had been torn apart and then healed again?

When they’d come here in the long months before, he’d always brought so many expectations, such huge asks in his prayers. Strategies for a future free of the Romans, for building popular support and attention so that they’d be in a position to usurp the corrupt priests and representatives…really, not much had actually changed in these three day in terms of the world around them. Those unanswered questions, however, those pressures were gone.

Jesus had told him that when he had returned, when the newly risen Lord had healed him, looked at him with eyes that had somehow become even more calm and composed that before, and invited Simon to walk with him in the garden.

They had spoken there, and the interaction was so blinding in Simon’s mind that the details escaped him, but not in anyway the feelings, the sense of understanding. Jesus had thanked him for everything they’d put into the cause, their energy and their sacrifices, but that they were following a different direction now, of peace, of fostering love and humanity in people one by one. Simon knew in his heart, even as he said it that it was right, that on some level this had always been what they had meant to do, and that a lot of what else had gone down had subverted this single, pure, original intent.

Sitting here with Thom, staring out towards where the wilds became the city of Jerusalem again, it felt so right. He wasn’t responsible anymore for the problems of the world, wasn’t somehow betraying everything that was good by pausing in slamming himself against the corrupt influences. He could just be here in this space, be here with his brother, and with God, and it felt…so good.

“Yeah. I get it.” He said wistfully in response to Thom losing the words. “I, uh, figured this was where you’d be, when Thaddeus said you weren’t with the rest of them. Made sense.” As hard as it was to tear himself away from Jesus’ prescence, there was more to be done, and people more than him who needed that light right now, he could see that. As for sitting with the other apostles and followers, well, it wouldn’t have felt right. The way he felt right now, so blasted open by all that he’d seen, by all that had happened - he couldn’t imagine going back to small talk. And, they’d been one pair of arresting eyes in particular, large, hollow, and familiar that had caught his, and - things had been pretty messed up between him and Tabatha when they’d…parted. It seemed better to steer clear of the whole thing for now.

“We’re not?” Simon exhaled, lying back on the hilltop until only the stars and Thom’s shoulder filled his eyes. “Then, I, uh, I guess there’s some stuff I have to apologise for. I mean from…before.” Jesus may have undone the marks they left on each other, but that didn’t excuse any of what had gone on, really. It made his stomach turn to think of it now. Although maybe that had something more to do with the bare bites he’d stolen while travelling over the last few days. His body pitched in with a dubious stomach gurgle that made clear it’s feelings on the matter, but he ignored it. He could deal with hunger. He couldn’t not address this, however. “I just…I want you to know that a lot of what I said, it wasn’t true. Wasn’t ever true. I’m sorry.”

His stomach rumbled again and Simon burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it, of not being able to escape being human right when he felt the most transcendant he’d ever been in his life. “Cana.” He sputtered out in reply, rubbing the space under his ribcage with his palm as a distraction. “I’d gone back, pretty much after…the thing with us, and had been back with…mum, until I got the message…shit. I should probably text her.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I sort of left without saying anything…yeah, crap. Hold on.”

He pulled out his phone, the screen splintering and fractured where it had come out of his pocket where he’d run down one of the highways and smashed on the asphalt. It had still worked enough to lead him back to Jesus, so he hadn’t been too worried - but it was only now that he was registering the little 92 number next to his mum’s contact details.

Crap. He started tapping out that he was safe and that he’d get back to her properly soon. It was about as much as he could manage, at this moment.

                       doubting-tomas                                        

Thom watched the tiny little glow  like a captured star in Simon’s hands as he tapped away, not fully conscious of who he was typing. Sam. His mind drifted to the others in Simon’s life, the others in Thom’s life - and wondered distantly what they would be thinking, if their mindset had changed at all now, or whether even news had spread to their tiny little village settled at the nook of the lake of what had happened. There were realities he had to face, pasts he had to come to terms with. But not now.

“You don’t have to apologise,” he said, slowly. His mind drifted through the words that had been said, the punches that had filled the holes in the sentences of what hadn’t been said. Everything felt as sharp as if it had happened only moments before, unnecessary as if it had happened several lifetimes ago. “I mean… I’m sorry too. Really sorry. But, even what was true… There were things that may have been true then, that might have had meaning then…” He trailed off to lick his dried, crack lips, a cut that was healing slowly. “…That don’t now.“ It was the worst thing that could have happened, but without it, would they be here now? Would everything had been just unsaid, unfelt, throttled up? Maybe everything needed to be broken, all bridges burned, in order to start again.

But he was so glad to have Simon here, now, when all others were somewhere. He was the one line bringing him home. “I’m not sure where the others are,” he said. It wasn’t really something he was dwelling on and he didn’t expect an answer from Simon, but inside him, the inner circle of him, and Jesus - and now Simon - was opening up into little fractals from his soul into the sky, and the faces of the whole camp were coming back to him, and beyond. There was a lot of work to be done, he thought. And lots of todays and tomorrows to do them in. Slowly he allowed himself to spread his thoughts further and around again, back to Jesus, the words of Him slowly coming back, and all those feelings they had opened up, so much to feel, so much to take in…

                       yellingtheirdevotion                                        

“…I think I get what you mean. Like, the me from…even a week ago, seems really different now. It’s bizarre how much has happened even in - hours! It’s crazy. So crazy. But, you know.” He hit send, and let his arms be brought down naturally by gravity until his phone was resting against his forehead, clicking it onto standby so that it didn’t blind him.

“I think I’m the last one to get here. Saw most people back talking to Jesus or milling about at camp.” Simon murmured in response, running through the tally in his head. “Peter, John, all of the cousins…Thaddeus, Nath and Phil, both James’, Matt…” When he started counting down the 12 in his head, his blood ran cold by the final addition. God. Judas. He’d…he’d put the other man from his mind, for the most part. He’d just been so angry about what he’d done to Jesus, where his short-sightedness had left them and then…shocked, he guessed, when he did what he did in the end. And that things that Simon had said as well, that he wished Judas was alive so that he could get him with his own two hands…shit. He’d never even visited the grave, in the end. He only knew about where it was from what…Tabs had said.

God, and she’d found him, hadn’t she. Even with Jesus back this must…this must all be pretty hard for her. And if she…or any of them blamed him then he’d…he’d kind of get it. Simon had said some pretty atrocious things to Judas, especially…that last time.

“You, uh…” Simon swallowed, putting his mobile away and rolling his head over to look up at Thom. “…You want to come with for a…thing, tomorrow? I think there’s some, uh, unfinished business that we both, uh, maybe could do with taking care of.”

                       doubting-tomas                                        

Thom nodded, thinking through the 12 in his head too, each of them held in a bathing revenant light in his mind, each of them glowing back to life in his mind as he thought of them; they weren’t just traveling men on the road anymore, he knew, they were something more; and even if they’d get lost to the vestiges of time within a hundred years or so, right now, they were really leaders of men for the word of God, at least in his mind, at least in Jesus’ mind, who was all that matters.

Except… one name was unspoken. That name and space was a restless wind, unsettled, unresolved. He had heard rumours as he had been charging around in the past long few days, but there had been rumours about a lot of things, after all he still wasn’t overly clear what had happened with Peter…  Everything had changed since the Lord had come back, and surely that would have changed too, and even if something had really happened to him, he would have risen again too… Jesus wouldn’t have wanted an Earth without him.

But Jesus had said nothing when he had saw Him, and so he had kind of pushed them to the back of his mind like an inconvenient truth… He swallowed dried blood as he looked down at Simon. There was a lightness in the sky to the east, only a slightly bluer sky, but a reminder that the earth was alive and the sun was slowly coming, and breathing slowly into a new day. “Which thing?” he said, deliberately and languidly, trying to measure out if he wanted to ask, knowing from Simon’s tone this would be something he didn’t want to know.

                       yellingtheirdevotion                                        

“The…” Simon took a deep breath, “…the you know, they put Judas after…what happened. It was…I don’t actually know where it is. I’ve been told, I mean, but I haven’t actually seen it. I wasn’t around to help. Well…” He dragged a hand over his face, because that wasn’t quite it. “…I refused to help. Like, they asked and I said…I said no.”

The usual cloud of denials rushed to his mouth, that they had other things to worry about, that it wasn’t right, that Judas had brought it on himself - but now that they’d finished all the charging around and he had to actually think about everything about had happened, everything that he’d done…God. It wasn’t exactly great.

He liked to think that he knew evil when he saw it, that whether it was the Romans out on the streets or the more quiet injustices in the home, he knew when people were pulling shit and that he didn’t stand for it. He thought back to what had happened though, the way that people had looked at him, and somehow along the when he’d slipped across to the wrong side. “I mean…you might not want to but…I just mean that I’m going tomorrow, so if you were going to…yeah.”

                       doubting-tomas                                        

Thom nodded slowly, everything sinking in. So… it was true. It should be hurting more right now, he should feel something more than… this. Numbness. He felt wiped out of emotion right now, like the wave of happiness that had washed over him had crashed down to the shore. Normality to despair to the absolute sheer incredulity of the last few days to… this. The world was shrunken, pale, white, everything was thin and lacking, and so much lost. Yet under everything that had happened, he could still see the glow of Jesus, and everything was still ultimately beautiful, and all it needed was for him to be by His side again…

Something drifted to his mind, a memory as strong as if he was walking within it right now. Seven months ago, they had visited the village of Taybeh and Jesus had been leading lessons there. Thom had been speaking in the square, and walking away from it to look for a local bath house, he found an older lady gathered up in her robes. She had first caught his attention because she looked so startingly like his own grandmother before she had died, so he stopped to offer her some bread and talk. There was something in her eyes… She had spat at the ground and told him about her family with this simmering anger, how much they had suffered, how her daughter had been forced into prostitution when the Romans had invaded, how the Jewish local priests had refused to give help to her son in law. He had heard worse stories, but she captivated him, like a fly within a spider’s web. “Tell me,” she had told him, with eyes that should have been angry to match her words, but instead were black and dead. “Despite all this Nazareth’s miracles and his good deeds, how can there be a God?”   And Thom had listened. And for the first time, he was unable for the first time to find a single reply that could have soothed her.

He couldn’t explain why this memory had come to him, because he could never consider a world without a God - especially not /now/ - but in such a difficult world, with all this joy yet suffering and none of it proportioned out equally and no real explanation for either… he thought he could understand something of what she was feeling.

He had to shake himself from this reverie to bring himself back to exactly what Simon was saying and the implications of this. “Yes,” he said, more bitterly than he meant to. “Yes, I’ll come.” Maybe when he was there, it would all start to make more sense…

                       yellingtheirdevotion                                        

“Great.” He managed, rubbing his hand against his forehead, as if he could iron out the crease there and get deeper, to the tension growing in his brain. The pleasant mood had gone, drained away with that admission and taking his sense of peace with it down the plughole.

Even now he could feel that familiar resentment raising it’s head again, the seething burn that even now, at what was one of the few uncompromised joys he’d ever experienced in is life, that Judas had once more ruined it by butting in.

As he realized that, his stomach turned over, because fuck, the guy was dead, was Simon really that much of a dick? The annoyance didn’t fully dissipate, but he supposed acknowledging it was something that almost resembled progress, at least.

He could hear the edge in Thom’s reply, and wondered if he’d reached the same conclusions. That familiar jagged excuse popped up in his head, that it wasn’t like the other apostle could point fingers, what the hell had he ever done for Judas. Simon screwed up his face, rubbing at his forehead - it felt almost like there were two hims in his head, his new self, his better self, and the same patterns and rhythms of how he used to be that just didn’t make any sense anymore. He was…he was getting now why it had been strained meeting with the others again. Was this…was this what he was like? Was this him?

“I…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. That he was sorry? It didn’t really make any difference, now.

“It’s, uh, under the tree where him and Tabs used to hang out, I think. Or at least, around there. I’m sort of pegging on it being at least slightly obvious. Hopefully.”

He tried to think of something, swallowing audibly, reaching for something to say to fill the void. “It’s…everything’s going to be different now, isn’t it? At least that’s what I got from Jesus. Everyone’s gonna go their separate ways, and - maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know.”

                       doubting-tomas                                        

Thom nodded to his words. “Huh...” Under the tree. That was just... wow. It was just sad, in a way. It was more than sad. He had always just scoffed at this growing tendency towards angsty self-hating tendencies before, that seemed commonly accepted for young people these days, and so hand in hand came his deep resentment for the selfishness of suicide, the pointless of it all. But this... This was entirely... What Judas had done, to their Lord, was inexcusable. His betrayal to them all. To God himself. Followed by yet another inexcusable action, to... what? Cancel them out? He was back teaching his kids again, where ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, and... Well, even his own children knew that lesson. What made adults so stupid? He wondered if Jesus had said anything to Simon about this. He hadn’t said anything to him, and he wished he had asked now, because it would iron out the beautiful fabric of everything that had happened... and where creases were, doubts entered his mind. Did Judas defy God’s great plan, or was he part of it?

“Do you think so?” In his minds, the strands of everyone coming together just seemed so complete, but that reality was wavering in and out of the one where  they were falling apart for the final time, like they existed at once. “Whatever Jesus says... He always knows best.” He smiled as he watched the horizon. If anything could confirm that, it was Him, rising from the dead. If he said it was going to be different, it was going to be different. It had been the best years of his life, but that didn’t mean they had to last forever.

[doubting-tomas]

a hundred random starters 

below are starters based on/inspired by various sources. change the genders as you see fit ;)

❝ why do you keep lying to me? ❞

❝ have you ever considered the idea that maybe, this world doesn’t revolve around you & your problems? ❞

❝ love is love is love is love. ❞

❝ marriage is an absurd arrangement. one is sold as a fifteen-year-old child and makes a vow one does not understand and then regrets for thirty years or more, and which one can never undo again. ❞

❝ why are you crying this time? ❞

❝ you will never escape. ❞

❝ this isn’t what I wanted! ❞

❝ everything has its consequences. ❞

❝ this face bears the mission of heaven. ❞

❝ no, you shall dismantle the house of lies, but build the temple of the divine. ❞

❝ one copper coin for a bowl of noodles! ❞

❝ that one has the heart of a lion. ❞

❝ I needed to be summoned. ❞

❝ there’s no reason for this hostility! I come in peace. ❞

❝ they died screaming. ❞

❝ why fight anymore? what’s the point of fighting against destiny? ❞

❝ how long have you known? ❞

❝ I can only speak for myself. ❞

❝ the law can be changed. ❞

❝ are you sure you’re not pregnant? ❞

❝ your child is adorable! ❞

❝ you gave him a riddle for his birthday? ❞

❝ you have no fucking right to treat me this way. ❞

❝ your ambition blinds you. ❞

❝ he adores you. ❞

❝ I feel like I should be shocked that you two had sex there, but I’m not anymore. ❞

❝ she’s going to kill you. ❞

❝ have you ever tried the cakes? they’re actually quite delicious. ❞

❝ you’ll need to be punished. ❞

❝ you should learn to lie better. ❞

❝ sometimes I wonder if you’re real. ❞

❝ I will take back what is mine & kill anyone who stands in my way. ❞

❝ then kill me. ❞

❝ there’s no such thing as love. there is only lust. ❞

❝ you’re selfish. you never think about anyone but yourself. ❞

❝ i’m sorry, but they’re gone. ❞

❝ death is just another adventure. ❞

❝ stop! ❞

❝ let them watch. ❞

❝ you have no shame, do you? ❞

❝ I can’t believe we’re talking about this right now. ❞

❝ I need advice. sex advice. ❞

❝ alright, tell me the truth, is he good in bed? ❞

❝ she is the best thing in my life. ❞

❝ you love him? ❞

❝ do you love me at all? ❞

❝ do you believe in soul mates? ❞

❝ please, you have to believe me. I didn’t kill anyone! ❞

❝ history is written by the victorious. ❞

❝ at least she has a heart! you have none. ❞

❝ isn’t it more important that they told you? ❞

❝ the king is displeased. ❞

❝ long live your majesty! ❞

❝ can you stop talking for just one moment & listen to me? ❞

❝ no matter how hard I try, they just won’t stay dead. ❞

❝ he’s a gold digger. he’ll screw anyone & marry them as long as they have money. ❞

❝ o! how sweet love must be! ❞

❝ do you really think that? ❞

❝ quick, you need to hide before they see you! ❞

❝ you taught me to never trust anyone. ❞

❝ this is extreme, even for you. ❞

❝ you guys were pretty loud last night. I guess it was good? ❞

❝ that wasn’t an apology & you know it. ❞

❝ are you a virgin? ❞

❝ I’m married. ❞

❝ best thing I ever did was marrying you. ❞

❝ red roses won’t erase the fact that you broke my heart. ❞

❝ stop taking all the ice cream! ❞

❝ has anyone told you that you’re sort of a little bitch? ❞

❝ it’s deep dish pizza. ❞

❝ do you want to fight for your land back or not? ❞

❝ I never realized how much of a coward you are. ❞

❝ there’s nothing worse than someone who isn’t willing to try new things. ❞

❝ haven’t you ever wanted to escape? to leave this place & explore the world? ❞

❝ i think you’ve had enough to drink. ❞

❝ your ancestors would be ashamed if they saw you. ❞

❝ one of the dolls is missing! ❞

❝ are we going to die here? ❞

❝ well looks like we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma. ❞

❝ I am no longer a child! ❞

❝ the baby won’t stop crying! i don’t know what to do anymore! ❞

❝ what if something happens to them? ❞

❝ once upon a time, I gave a damn about what people thought about me. ❞

❝ if he can get away with this, then so can i! ❞

❝ the dark shall come & take everything you love from you. ❞

❝ it’s the same story over & over again. you’d think people would know better by now. ❞

❝ there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. ❞

❝ you are what is wrong with this world. ❞

❝ shattered dreams can drive anyone mad. ❞

❝ I am a phoenix. burn me & I shall return, rising from the ashes. ❞

❝ this is my home. ❞

❝ home is where the heart is, where you feel safe & warm & loved. ❞

❝ running away has never solved a damn thing! ❞

❝ fuck me. ❞

❝ oh the things I’d do to you if we were alone. ❞

❝ stop, he’s not here, remember? he’s gone & he can’t hurt you anymore. ❞

❝ your husband/wife – is he/she good to you? ❞

❝ stop & think a moment, you have to stay & rest. there’s a child who needs you now, you can’t just run & be a fucking idiot. ❞

❝ once, I drank a whole bottle by myself. ❞

❝ what do I want? I want to kiss you a thousand times before undressing you & kissing every bit of your flesh a thousand more times. ❞

[doubting-tomas]

Thom drummed his fingers against the table top scattered with paper, words he couldn’t read, bureaucracy he couldn’t understand.

He knew charity well, but this kind of charity seemed to be a way of losing oneself to gain very little back. Nonetheless, he knew that he didn’t know anything about the day-to-day of those women... or Meg’s day-to-day. Not anymore.

“Does there need to be a reason?” he asked instead, rolling a piece of paper between his fingers. Everything in his life seemed to be a question to counter another question, and he was well aware of that, but it was a bad twitch he hadn’t learned yet how to cure.

“Can’t you tell they love you?”

@doubting-tomas

Meg snorted and her eyes rolled, although she wasn’t aware of the latter. Instead she busied herself with paperwork which she estimated would take her all evening and into the early hours of the morning. Meg didn’t understand what Jesus had found so appealing about charity work; it left Meg feeling exhausted. Then again, the women’s faces when she greeted them in the morning, when she helped them find work that wasn’t sex work, when they had a warm meal and a bed and their children were safe, it gave Meg a sense of purpose.

Since losing her family, it had at least given her peace.

“Love is a strong word,” Meg mumbled in reply, busy with signing her name across dotted lines. This wasn’t the only centre she planned to have, at the moment she was preparing to open another one in a town just north of here. “They’re desperate women, they’ll do anything to get off those streets.” Meg loved them, but she expected nothing in return. This was born of selfish reason—well, maybe not entirely—but at least here is where she felt needed and by god, she had missed that feeling.

Finally, she looked up. “What I want to know is what brings you back to a place like this,” she commented, an eyebrow raising in curiosity. “There’s nothing here for you any more and I definitely was of no use to use, still am.” What she did want to say never left her mouth. She itched to ask him why he came back when she had just settled into her life once more.

It wasn’t fair. She had already grown accustom to loss so many times.

[doubting-tomas]

OOC

{So much fun going through all my old asks and drabbles requests! I still have lotssss to reply to but if anyone has any prompts or drabbles or asks, send them my way, nice to get some new creative ideas}

[doubting-tomas]

Thom nodded slowly, everything sinking in. So... it was true. It should be hurting more right now, he should feel something more than... this. Numbness. He felt wiped out of emotion right now, like the wave of happiness that had washed over him had crashed down to the shore. Normality to despair to the absolute sheer incredulity of the last few days to... this. The world was shrunken, pale, white, everything was thin and lacking, and so much lost. Yet under everything that had happened, he could still see the glow of Jesus, and everything was still ultimately beautiful, and all it needed was for him to be by His side again...

Something drifted to his mind, a memory as strong as if he was walking within it right now. Seven months ago, they had visited the village of Taybeh and Jesus had been leading lessons there. Thom had been speaking in the square, and walking away from it to look for a local bath house, he found an older lady gathered up in her robes. She had first caught his attention because she looked so startingly like his own grandmother before she had died, so he stopped to offer her some bread and talk. There was something in her eyes... She had spat at the ground and told him about her family with this simmering anger, how much they had suffered, how her daughter had been forced into prostitution when the Romans had invaded, how the Jewish local priests had refused to give help to her son in law. He had heard worse stories, but she captivated him, like a fly within a spider’s web. “Tell me,” she had told him, with eyes that should have been angry to match her words, but instead were black and dead. “Despite all this Nazareth’s miracles and his good deeds, how can there be a God?”   And Thom had listened. And for the first time, he was unable for the first time to find a single reply that could have soothed her.

He couldn’t explain why this memory had come to him, because he could never consider a world without a God - especially not /now/ - but in such a difficult world, with all this joy yet suffering and none of it proportioned out equally and no real explanation for either... he thought he could understand something of what she was feeling.

He had to shake himself from this reverie to bring himself back to exactly what Simon was saying and the implications of this. “Yes,” he said, more bitterly than he meant to. “Yes, I’ll come.” Maybe when he was there, it would all start to make more sense...

Simon climbed through the shrubs, pupils black and wide with the dark, feeling his way through the bushes. Without the sunrise, he’d missed the path, and was making a trip through the plantlife, instead. He was just lucky that it wasn’t thorny underfoot, given his bare feet. The burning summer had cracked the dry earth apart, and almost all but the most hardy of vegetation had been roasted away by the heat. 

He hadn’t escaped the tearing, himself. Red had crusted in streaks across the insides of his legs where he’d caught himself running, and on his feet, it was less obvious, merely dried on with the dirt. What did he even care, now that the skin was whole, and new again? He’d barely noticed, or even felt it, when it was raw, let alone now it had been healed. He’d simply needed to get here, however was quickest after he’d gotten an intermittently broken text message that had seemed too crazy to be true.

The stars seemed to hum with light above, and he sucked air into grateful lungs as he climbed. In the cooling minutes that he’d been away from his place at Jesus’ feet, he’d been increasingly aware of the clothes weighing him down, damp as they were from the sweat had seeped in faster than it could evaporate. It occurred to him that he probably stank, that his hair was crawling with grease, and dust, and none of it mattered because Jesus was alive again. 

It was that thought, more than cresting the hill that made him stop and seize a breath. The wind of the summer night whistled across the hilltop, and the dim light almost made him miss the familiar outline in place, as it should have been, at their prayer spot, under the olive tree. “-Thom!”

[doubting-tomas]

72. What colour are your towels? {Ic}

I think they used to be white... I stole them from a Hilton hotel a long time ago. (Sorry Jesus)

They’re a kind of weird colour now...

[doubting-tomas]

Talk about the time you were most content in life.

When I first found Jesus, it was the first time I experienced prolonged bliss in a completely just... natural way. The only way I can describe the bliss from Him and learning about Him is being drunk or on drugs, some sort of chemical interaction or imbalance, but to get it when I wake up every morning and go to bed every night... it’s like living a dream. But as the Romans {YOU} have become more of a problem, and things have got more... complicated, I guess it’s been punctuated a bit, but when I’m alone with Him, when He’s looking at just me, I feel it again.

Before that, my most content moments came from being on the road, getting away from home. But I realised I was just running away, so it didn’t last for long, but I find I always forget and think that going away again will resolve everything. Actually, thinking about it, I was pretty happy when I was on road trips as a teenager, going away on camp fire trips. I’m sure back then I wasn’t content though in my own way. It’s easy to see our most content memories with a nostalgic rose-tinted view, and forget what was underlying them.

[doubting-tomas]

113. What was your childhood nickname?

At school, Diddy.

I don’t know why my brother didn’t get the nickname but I did.

At home, just Thom mostly, Thommy when I was a lot younger

[doubting-tomas]

Send “STOP PRETENDING TO BE OK!” for my muse’s reaction to yours yelling this at them

[doubting-tomas]

Been 3 years.

Feels like 30.

This kind of shit is why, guys.

[doubting-tomas]

"I feel like we would make more of an impression if we had a catchy rhyme like Team Rocket."

“…That’s maybe a point. Hey, what about the one that gets used for that footballer? You know like, uh…”

David Beckham, 

Football Star

Walks Like a Lady

And He Wears a Bra

“…I mean, obviously we’ll use totally different lyrics, but the tune’s kind of effective.”

[doubting-tomas]

{HEY YOOOOU}

🙆🙆🙆🙆🙆🙆-me when @doubting-tomas messages me abt jcs squad related things